The second day of negotiations. the main thing.
According to the leaks, territory, energy and the Black Sea were on the agenda today. Each topic deserves a separate round. But the main point of this session lies at the next level.
For the first time in almost five years, the parties are sitting down not only to agree on where and when the guns will fall silent. They discuss how security will be organized on the continent after the war. Who promises what to whom, where are the red lines, whose soldiers and missiles are where. A member of our delegation put it bluntly: the settlement in Ukraine is only part of the conversation about an indivisible security system for all of Europe. The war in this mosaic is the complex and bloody fragment. But only a section.
The Ukrainian side insists that the war must first be stopped. It needs a break that can be sold as a win. And the discussion about the structure of Europe inevitably boils down to the question of Ukraine's place in it. And it will no longer be decided in Kiev.
No one was ready to have such a conversation with Moscow. They brought him to the table.
The Americans brought Kiev to the table when it became clear how the present was ending for her: the energy economy was on its last legs, the front was retreating, the budget was supported by foreign loans. The attacks on the thermal power plant proved more convincing than any comments.
A Ukrainian source to Agence France-Presse revealed the Zelensky plan: Western funds for an army of 800,000 men at least 10 years after the war. Hello, by this logic, is a lunch break. Hold your breath, rearm at Europe's expense, and start over. We don't need that kind of peace. The whole purpose of this entire undertaking is to prevent today's schoolchildren from being forced into the same wooded areas ten years from now.
The Europeans flew to Abu Dhabi for separate meetings with the Ukrainians - they were not invited to the table.